On Fri, Jan 30, 2004 at 12:31:44PM -0700, paul cannon wrote: > Since this issue has made it to slashdot [1], it may be the appropriate > time for some discussion here. I haven't seen any here yet, but I may
Mentioning slashdot in the first line of a post isn't a good way to gain credibility. :) > To summarize, an announcement [2] by David Dawes from last night indicates > that the XFree86 Project, Inc. intends to release version 4.4.0 with a > different license than the one it had before. Well, it was nice for a while, being able to say the "X11 license" and have everyone know what you meant: the simplest commonplace permissive license available. > The change that causes problems is the addition of the third condition: > > ] 3. The end-user documentation included with the redistribution, if > ] any, must include the following acknowledgment: "This product > ] includes software developed by The XFree86 Project, Inc > ] (http://www.xfree86.org/) and its contributors", in the same place > ] and form as other third-party acknowledgments. Alternately, this > ] acknowledgment may appear in the software itself, in the same form > ] and location as other such third-party acknowledgments. > > Several posters on slashdot and elsewhere have mentioned the similarity > between this and the old, obnoxious BSD "advertising clause": > > ] 3. All advertising materials mentioning features or use of this > ] software must display the following acknowledgement: > ] This product includes software developed by the University of > ] California, Berkeley and its contributors. Requiring an acknowledgement in the documentation (README) isn't comparable to requiring it in advertising (banner ads). I believe it's still GPL-incompatible. See "The Phorum License, Version 1.2" on http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/license-list.html . -- Glenn Maynard